I thought I’d write this guide because I’ve received a lot of emails from people who have visited my blog, saying their hair doesn’t seem to grow past a certain length, no matter what they do. OK there’s a good reason for that and I’m going to tell you how to get past it.
I know from harsh experience why hair doesn’t grow past a certain length and I know how to to get it growing again. When I started badly losing my hair several years back, my hair got thinner but I also noticed the hair at the front of my scalp just stopped growing past a few inches in length.
Now, I know many of the people who have emailed me have much longer hair than that and they are struggling to grow their hair past shoulder length or perhaps even as long as elbow length, but the same thing that has saved my hair can get yours growing longer, faster and healthier.
But before I get into the details of how to force hair growth, we need to go over a few best practices that you need to be following routinely.
The three step approach to growing longer hair…
The key ingredients of growing longer hair are as follows:
- Protect your hair from split ends
- Feed your hair
- Keep your stress levels low
OK, let’s get started.
Protect your hair from split ends
First off, hair grows about half an inch per month on average. So if your hair is twenty inches long, it’s over three years old at the ends. In that time you may have brushed those ends two and half thousand times. Every time you’ve used heat on your hair, or been swimming it can cause a little damage to those ends, which is actually protein loss (tiny fragments of hair are broken away and lost). A study conducted in 2003 (Effect of mineral oil, sunflower oil, and coconut oil on prevention of hair damage), provides details on protein loss as a result of brushing and combing.
Anyway the crux of it is that hair is susceptible to damage; not just from brushing, but from wind, rain, exercise, sun exposure, even sleeping in the wrong position! All of this protein loss (hair damage), eventually causes split ends. Once your hair has split you’re done for, it won’t grow past that length, without being wispy and frail.
Next, learn how to protect your hair from split ends…
How to protect your hair from damage and split ends
1. Don’t brush your hair when it’s wet
Hair is most susceptible to damage when it’s wet. So brushing when wet will cause more split ends. In fact, brushing your hair when it’s dry will do hardly any damage at all. So making sure your hair is dry is the key factor to brushing.
2. Don’t use heat on your hair
I know straighteners, crimpers and curlers are all the rage, but resist the temptation to use these products every day (or even at all if you can help it). The best way to have beautiful, healthy looking hair, is to have beautiful healthy hair! Not to make it look shiny with heat but to actually make your hair healthy – we’ll get on to how to do that in a minute.
If you really have to use hair dryers and heated metal, make sure you protect your hair first with a quality heat protection product that coats the hair.
Next: how to protect your hair all through the day…
